Hi Everyone, I am so happy and excited I found this forum. I had a question for anyone who can help. Myself and small group of people have started developing some software for the n64 and we plan to make working copies for distribution. We are actually working to make a GBA player for the n64. Similar to the Super Gameboy that was created for the SNES. One thing that we are not exactly sure about is the CIC lockout chip on n64 games. From my understanding, they are on official NTSC games to communicate with the N64 that it is an official licensed game. Since we are creating a device that isn't, is there a hardware work around that people use? I have seen some devices that you need to stick a random game in to bypass it, but on the other hand the everdrive 64 seems to boot up just fine on the n64.... Sorry for the long winded question, Is there a common way to "bypass" the lockout chip or is there any suggestions anyone here can give? Thanks in advance!!
My understanding is that the Everdrive and the 64drive use donor CIC chips salvaged from N64 games. As you have already found many people used hardware passthrough to get at the CIC using a donor cartridge. The SN64 takes this route. The only attempt I've seen to reverse the CIC is by Marshalh. http://www.retroactive.be/cic/ it looks like it was last updated in 2011 though.
This seems to have gone under the radar somehow.. http://www.iseclab.org/papers/ccsfp221-kammerstetter.pdf I never knew it either and just found it by accident when googling CECRN8! //Edit: I read the paper twice now (And I must say that it's one of the best papers I have ever read! Informative, funny and very nice writing style). While the authors did not include the entire key material and code, it is very easy to dump the chip. More importantly, we can't only dump one of these chips but probably all of them! Writing an emulator of the CIC should be a piece of cake! If there isn't a topic about this already it deserves one. (//Edit2: There is a topic from 2 weeks ago. https://www.assemblergames.com/forums/showthread.php?55237)
If you're not sure whether you're posting in the right forum, take a moment to study the list of forums and acquaint yourself with the rules. Then use common sense. Please don't keep posting the same question in multiple forums. This, the Nintendo development forum, is the right place to ask a question about Nintendo development ;-) I assume you're not familiar with the Wide-Boy64 AGB, then? This has already been made. A good 15 years ago.
